Hi, Azazel (a fellow Isaac Asimov fan?),

The Zuiko 28mm prime I have for my OM-1 doesn't vignette in the viewfinder, and a I don't recall any problems with the prints. However, it wouldn't take much intrusion into the field of view to produce vignetting, and the usual suspect is a lens hood. Judging from the direction of the light in your shot, I suspect you may have been using one? Increasing the f-stop would not affect the degree of vignetting, except possibly where it is caused by inherent light loss at the outer edge of the lens itself. But it that case, the vignette would not be so sharply defined. Also, dirt, even if present, would not be as obviously visible, so I don't think that's the problem. I'm voting for a lens hood......

Re the telephoto lens: I have a Vivitar 70-150mm which works surprisingly well, but I'd recommend sticking with Zuiko glass, if you can find it. The best place to look on-line is keh.com - good used gear, reasonably priced.

Thanks for the advice. I received similar advice from another person. I am going to have to look into the lens more. I was not using a lens hood on it, so I am going to have to try to figure out what is intruding into the frame. As you mentioned it looks more like an obstruction then a simple fall off in light.

I think in the future I will stick to zuiko glass if I can. I have also heard generally good things about vivitar and sigma (my 135mm f/2.8 is a vivitar it works pretty well).

Thanks!

PS yes I am a fairly large Asimov fan

Most of the time, when we look through the viewfinder we're so focused on the subject that we don't see the stuff going on in the corners. Try mounting the 28mm and see if the vignetting is visible.

Now that I've sold off my Minolta Maxxum 7 and five lenses the OM-1 is my main 35mm camera, so I may be upgrading a couple of lenses to Zuiko. KEH has a couple of 75-150 f4.5 manual focus lenses in the $150-$215US price range.

Good luck!

my 135 and 50mm lenses weren't giving me any vignetting. Just with the new 28-80mm lens. I will have to take a better look through the view finder to see if I notice it at all and try different things. Any chance it could be the place where I am getting the negatives developed that is causing the problem (I suspect not)?

I think I will shot a roll tonight with the 28-80 at different focal lengths and f stops and a couple of pictures with my 50mm lens and see what turns up.

One last thing is could the storage of my undeveloped film be causing it? Before using I am keeping it refrigerated (fuji film) and the cardboard of the box at least feels kind of moist...not saturated, but mildly moist. Even with the film in their sealed canisters, is there any chance that the film having sat in there for probably 2 months now has caused the film to deteriorate causing this? I would think it would be fairly uniform deterioration if it was though.

Thanks.
-Matt

Check particularly at the shorter focal lengths, around 28mm. That's where vignetting problems typically happen. If it were related to film condition, there would be evidence of that across the whole frame, not just in the corners, and certainly not so well defined. Film lasts a long time, well past the marked expiration date, especially if refrigerated.

Well I found the problem yesterday. I shot a roll of film and got it developed quickly to make sure I was right. It turns out that filter attachment ring at the end of the lens is obscuring the edges of the film and view finder. Fortunately that filter ring attachment is removable. I shot a few pictures, then I discovered it was removable (it was on there hard) and shot most of the rest of the roll with 4 or 5 pictures taken with my 50mm prime just for some comparison. The problem is still there a little bit...but it is no longer cutting off the corners, it is only darkening them by maybe a half f-stop in the corner 1% or so of the picture, it is no longer cutting it off completly.

This problem is no longer appearing at all in the longer settings in the 60+mm range. It is however most prominent in the 35-45mm range for some reason and also almost completely gone in the 28-35mm range. Anyway, the quality of the photos is much much higher now and I consider acceptable.

It of course is not good that I can't attach filters to the camera at all, but not much of an inconvenience for now as I am still a fairly amatuer photographer and it is probably going to be awhile before I am really playing with filters and such. I will probably get another 28-70 or 28-80mm lens eventually, but for now this one works okay and can produce some quality images (I just need to scan some of them from yesterday. A few of them turned out amazing). I did try attaching the polorizing filter I have for the lens and is was extremely obvious in the view finder that it obscurs the corners badly (much worse then just the filter ring attachment).

Thanks so much for your advice, without it I probably would not have been looking for obstructions to the view.

I am planning on posting up one of the nice pictures I took yesterday once I can get it scanned later today.

As another line of questioning though, do you know of anywhere that might be able to fix the TTL light meter on my OM-1? The couple of places I have seen online seem to run from $110-200 to fix it. Right now I am working without a light meter and I actually have been doing great without it...until I get to indoor shots. I am still underexposing those shots a fair amount, but maybe with some practice I can get the hang of the exposure settings I need for indoor lighting (natural and artificial).

Thanks again.
-Matt

Here is a picture with the now , semi, fixed lens. 28mm f/5.6. Scanner wasn't the best.

[image]http://static.flickr.com/111/259858528_b9a67de94c.jpg?v=0[/image]

Was that shot at f2.8? no evidence of vignetting there...

It was shot at f/5.6. The lens has a minimum stop of f/3.5 and I had to stop it down once because I was using iso400 film and it was pretty bright out (totaly clear skies with no sun and no haze around 4pm) with the film speed at 1000 to try to reduce the DOF as much as I could without overexposing the film to much.

I have a similar picture of the flowers on the other side of the sidewalk that are redish using my 50mm f/1.8 lens also set at f/5.6 and the quality is almost identical, thought the DOF on the 50mm lens is less. Once the camera is stopped down a full stop the vignetting is only noticable in the 35-45mm zoom range and once it is down two stops there is no noticable vignetting at all.

Still a bit annoying, but I can deal with it for now (especially as it was a $10 lens with shipping). Now later I do want to find a zoom lens in that range of 28-70 or 28-80 that can handle some filters on it without any vignetting at the wider zoom ranges so I can at least use a polorizing filter (which I hear is usually the hardest to use with wide angle and ultra wide angle lenses because of how far it sticks out).
-Matt

Samigon was an inexpensive lens line. You'll have much better results when you can afford to move up to a Tamron or Sigma or Zuiko. You shouldn't have vignetting problems with those brands, even with a polarizer attached. But always remember, it's the photographer that makes the picture successful, not the lens.